The Madras High Court on Friday directed the State government to suspend within a week the Justice R. Regupathi Commission of Inquiry, constituted by the AIADMK government in 2011 to probe alleged irregularities in the construction of a new Assembly-cum-Secretariat complex during the DMK regime between 2006 and 2011.
Passing interim orders on a couple of writ petitions filed by DMK president M. Karunanidhi in 2015 challenging the proceedings of the commission, Justice S.M. Subramaniam ordered that all further allotment of funds including perquisites and government facilities to the commission should be stopped till the final disposal of the writ petitions. He said continuance of the commission, without any end in sight, would not serve any purpose.
“If the report is submitted after a lapse of 10 years, further actions or prosecutions, if any, against public servants concerned would be delayed and in some occasions may not be possible at all. That would be the idea of the persons involved in such illegal activities. However, the State as well as the courts can never encourage or pave way for such an escape route for the offenders from the clutches of law,” the judge observed.
He issued a direction to Mr. Regupathi to hand over all records, reports of investigating agencies, statements and evidence collected by the panel so far to the government within two weeks.
On receipt of the documents, the government was directed to scrutinise them and institute criminal prosecution against the public servants as well as government officials involved in the construction of the Secretariat complex if a prima facie case was made out against them. The Assembly complex is now a multi super-specialty hospital.
‘Review others’
Further, the State government was directed to review the functioning of all other Commissions of Inquiry in existence and take a decision within four weeks on their continuance.
The government was given the liberty to either dissolve certain commissions if they were found to be unnecessary or fix a time frame for them to submit their reports. He also ordered that the commissions must be allotted office space only in government office buildings and not in bungalows meant for sitting judges and ministers.
Mr. Justice Subramaniam recalled that the first Law Commission itself, had in its fourteenth report, opined that the practice of judges looking forward to or accepting employment under the government after retirement was undesirable as it could affect independence of judiciary. It was recommended that a constitutional bar should be imposed on judges accepting office either under the Centre or State governments similar to a bar imposed on the Comptroller and Auditor General and members of Public Service Commissions.
Interpreting Article 124(7) of the Constitution which states that no person who had held office as a judge of the Supreme Court should plead or act in any court or before any authority within the territory of the country, the judge said the use of the term ‘act’ would mean that former judges cannot take up judicial assignments after retirement. “But it is surprising that some Statutes explicitly provide that only a retired Supreme Court judge is to be appointed to the judicial positions under them. This proposition is against Article 124(7),” he said.
